


If You’re Into It

by canistakahari



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Academy Era, Anal Sex, Dirty Talk, Fingerfucking, Hand Jobs, Humor, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-15 02:39:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canistakahari/pseuds/canistakahari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things Jim didn’t know about Bones (and one thing he already did).</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You’re Into It

**01\. he engages willingly in grievous misuse of condiments**  
  
“Just so you know,” says Jim, with something akin to horrified awe, “I'm totally judging you right now.”  
  
McCoy spares Jim a pityingly disdainful glance. It’s the kind of look that—when directed at your garden-variety ordinary person—induces a sort of naked terror which generally manifests in a strong desire to stop talking with McCoy immediately and find something less soul-crushing to do, like counting inventory or filling out twenty pounds of paperwork. But Jim is not  _most people_  and he doesn’t wilt in the face of McCoy’s obvious contempt. He just absorbs, uses it as fuel, and reflects it back in the form of a blinding grin. When Jim’s good humour persists, McCoy just continues the appalling task of squirting way too much ketchup into his macaroni and cheese (and, honestly,  _any_  ketchup in macaroni and cheese is  _too much_ ). He finishes by shaking the now mostly empty bottle sharply, making damn sure he gets as much condiment as possible into his bowl, and then sets to work mixing the entire heinous mess up into a sticky conglomerate of glorpy, death-covered pasta.  
  
A moment ago, Jim was starving, but now his hunger takes a reluctant back-seat to his mild nausea and eclipsing fascination. There’s a little frown between McCoy’s eyebrows and a tightness to his mouth; it’s the look that, in the past two months they’ve known each other, Jim’s seen him wear in situations that call for careful attention and intense concentration. Surgery. Flight simulations. Written exams. Practical field medicine courses. Autopsies.   
  
...Eating macaroni and cheese that’s been quickly and mercilessly drowned in ketchup.   
  
McCoy doesn’t stop mixing until the contents of his bowl have reached a colour and consistency similar to that of lumpy blood-orange cement.   
  
Jim doesn’t realize how intently he’s staring—mouth open, fork forgotten in his hand—until McCoy flicks his gaze up to meet Jim’s and snaps, “What?” Then he scoops up some of the—it’s not even pasta anymore, it’s just  _not_ —concoction, and shoves it into his mouth, chewing violently like it’s a chore.   
  
“That is  _vile_ , Bones,” Jim manages to say when he moves past his disbelief and indignation. “Oh my god. You just ruined  _macaroni and cheese_. How is that even possible?”  
  
“Don’t call me that,” snaps McCoy automatically. “And you shut your mouth. I’ve seen you pick apart pizza and eat all the ingredients separately.  _That_  is ruining food.”  
  
“Pasta and cheese,” Jim says, ignoring him. “It’s simple. Warm. Gooey. Comforting. And you added  _ketchup_.”  
  
“So?” says McCoy belligerently. He very pointedly eats another bite, chewing with precision, holding his utensils like they’re weapons. In McCoy’s skilled hands, even a marshmallow could probably become a dangerous weapon.  
  
Jim scrunches up his face. “Ketchup isn’t an  _ingredient_.”  
  
“No,” agrees McCoy, happily digging into the rapidly-congealing pasta. “It’s a food group.”  
  
It’s not everything. Some lucky foodstuffs escape McCoy’s trigger-happy ketchup finger—desserts remain blessedly untouched, as does breakfast cereal (both hot and cold), fruit, and crackers. He doesn’t put it on pizza, or in soup, and, bewilderingly, he doesn’t put it on French fries—  
  
“What the  _fuck_ , Bones? You’re  _allowed_  to put it on fries, that’s what it’s  _for_! Do you leave it off hamburgers, too? ...What the hell are you doing with that cheese? Is that  _gravy_?”  
  
—but the vast majority of what disappears into McCoy’s mouth gets a healthy slathering of artificial tomato sauce first.   
  
Carrot sticks and crudité platters? McCoy bypasses the dip and coats them in  _ketchup_.  
  
A nice medium-rare steak? Fuck the delicate flavoured-butter—McCoy’s got  _Heinz_.  
  
Collard greens? Add some ketchup, man.  
  
Boiled cabbage? Christ, that’s foul, Jim—pass me the ketchup.  
  
Lasagne? Chicken parmigiana? Fettuccini Alfredo? Meatballs? ADD KETCHUP.   
  
Fish and chips? Definitely not tartar sauce, that’s too damn normal— _ketchup_.  
  
Chinese takeout? Oh, Jesus fuck, Bones, you  _cannot be serious_.   
  
Jim starts making an effort to eat as many meals as possible with McCoy, and if he occasionally has to skip class or duck out early in order for their schedules to correspond, well, that’s a concession he’s willing to make. If it means he gets to discover a disgusting new combination of ketchup and food, then he absolutely has to be there to witness it firsthand.   
  
After the kind of night that is best remembered through a protective barrier of filmy hangover haze and barely-there recollections of unwise drinking challenges, Jim wakes up on McCoy’s bed, fully dressed, to the smell of eggs cooking.   
  
Jim suffers through a moment of confusion regarding whether the roiling in his stomach is nausea or hunger, settles on  _absolute fucking starvation_ , and then sits up, rubbing at his eyes with his knuckles. He rubs until all he can see are brightly-coloured starbursts and then waits patiently for his vision to resurface from the depths of his skull. The image he’s met with upon his eyes kick-starting back into functionality is McCoy, in the kitchenette, poking a spatula into the frying pan sizzling gently on his camp-style hot plate.   
  
“How do you like your eggs?” he demands, knowing Jim’s awake without even looking over at the bed. Jim’s half-formed theory about McCoy having a creepy sixth sense gains a little more substance.  
  
“Sunny side up,” replies Jim, his voice gritty.   
  
McCoy grunts in acknowledgement. Jim flops back down until McCoy shouts at him to come to the table, which is actually just a sheet of industrial Plexiglas sheeting sat atop a crate in front of the tiny, two-person couch McCoy found on the side of the road and crammed into the makeshift living area. Jim pours himself onto the spot that’s rapidly becoming just for him, accepting the plate dazedly. McCoy has thoughtfully included toast cut into soldiers for Jim to drag through the soft yolk of his eggs, so for a moment he’s distracted enough not to notice that McCoy is eating a plate of scrambled eggs that has been _flooded with ketchup_.   
  
Jim drops his fork with a clatter and his toast ends up egg-side down in his lap as he laughs so hard he nearly throws up.   
  
  
  
 **02\. apparently he considers vandalizing improperly parked cars an appropriate past-time**  
  
The first time it happens, Jim assumes it’s just a spur-of-the-moment quirk.   
  
He’s known McCoy for about six months, and he’s pretty confident he’s already totally got his number—McCoy is one of the most straight-forward people Jim has ever met. He doesn’t hesitate in telling Jim what’s on his mind at any given moment (usually in excessive and vocal detail), he’s gruffly interested but doesn’t pry, and he even manages to mother hen Jim in such a hilariously abrasive way that Jim can’t find it in his heart of hearts to be annoyed or try to get him to back off. He’s also completely uninterested in maintaining standard social cues regarding courtesy; Jim’s pretty sure he made a cadet cry once from the sheer blistering force of a lecture about safety guidelines in a lab setting and then, later, when he felt terrible because another thing Jim has learned is that Bones is all bark and no bite, he bought the distraught cadet a drink in an awkward attempt to apologize.  
  
Jim really  _likes_  him. Sometimes he finds himself doing and saying things purely because he knows they’ll wind McCoy up or make him laugh. Jim has always been better at maintaining acquaintances rather than friends, people with individual identifying characteristics like John-the-boring-dentist or Samantha-the-biochemist, but McCoy cements himself so easily and quickly under the cobwebby ‘friend’ sector in Jim’s brain that Jim barely realizes the guy snuck in there, blew away all the dead spiders, and casually set up camp.  
  
It’s a mistake to assume his weird affinity for ketchup is the only blip on Jim’s bizarro-land radar.  
  
One night, they’re walking through the short-term Academy parking lot just past 2300 hours, during that twilight time when the lot is left half-empty and eerily deserted of human presence. McCoy is moving at a brisk pace just a step ahead of Jim, his hands jammed into his pockets and his head down against a chilly February breeze that Jim thinks is practically balmy and categorically indistinguishable from every other month of San Francisco weather but which McCoy has already expounded upon with gleeful vitriol.   
  
Abruptly, McCoy freezes in his tracks. Jim has had exactly two drinks of moderate strength at the on-campus bar, which has diminished his balance and capacity for unobstructed walking just enough to send him careening into McCoy’s broad back when he can’t stop himself in time.   
  
“For the love of God!” cries Jim, rubbing his forehead where it just collided with the back of McCoy’s skull. “Jesus  _fuck_  you have a hard head. Are your spidey senses tingling? Is someone out there Being An Idiot?”  
  
“Quiet,” hisses McCoy, standing so stock-still that Jim can only assume they’ve run into some sort of fascinating wild creature in the middle of the parking lot and Bones is afraid of either scaring it off or having it notice them. But then McCoy digs into his pocket, feeling around for something. Jim can’t see what he pulls out, but he  _can_  see now that what stopped McCoy in his tracks was a car.   
  
Jim identifies enviously that it’s a recent model, a glossy convertible coupé with ostentatious and slightly-illegal turbo boosters and cold-air intake—definitely no more than just a few months old. It’s the kind of sleek, cherry-red machine that gets Jim a little excited in the groinal region and has traffic cops gravitating closer even while the thing remains stationary, and this one is lovingly waxed and detailed, not an ounce of dirt or bird crap visible on the low-slung body.   
  
For all the car’s easy-going beauty and style, the thing is so abysmally parked it makes Jim wince.   
  
It’s sprawled diagonally over two spaces with obnoxious smugness, forcing the cars around it to adjust accordingly, and the back end butts over the second space far enough that the driver has basically rendered the mostly-free third space entirely unusable as well.   
  
“That takes some talent,” remarks Jim, bemused. McCoy is advancing on the car holding what appears to be a permanent marker.   
  
“Yeah, talent for driving people fucking nutty,” mutters McCoy. He prods hesitantly at the car, relaxing when it reveals itself to be lacking an alarm, and uncaps the marker, bending over the trunk to scrawl “YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE AND I HOPE YOU DROWN” in angry silver block letters.   
  
Jim smothers his laughter with his fist, eyes bright. “Jeeze, Bones, it’s not like you even drive—”  
  
“It’s the goddamn principle of the thing, Jim,” snaps McCoy, slowly and deliberately scrawling an incongruous happy face below his stabby note of aggressive fury. “I don’t drive now, but I’ve driven in the past, and I know how to fit a damn car in a box without infringing on  _other_  people’s ability to fit their cars into their own damn boxes. Because I’m not a dick that thinks his shiny new car gives him a free pass to show the world how much of a toolbag he is.”  
  
“Toolbag,” repeats Jim, in faint wonder. “What, you’re telling me you’ve never accidentally parked over a line?”  
  
“Accidentally?!” demands McCoy, turning around to face Jim with wild eyes and to gesture violently at the car. “If this is an accident, then I gotta find this fucker and do a goddamn vision test, because anyone who does this by  _accident_  is either missing an eye and don’t know it or the head injury he must have suffered is causin’ the whole world to melt into wavy lines.”  
  
Jim shouldn’t encourage him. He knows he shouldn’t. “That guy over there is on the curb. He crushed a bush.”  
  
This time, McCoy surrounds his concerned-citizen message (“DID YOU NOT NOTICE THE BUMP WHEN YOU CLIMBED THE GODDAMN CURB?”) with bubbly hearts.  
  
It’s the best night Jim’s had in a long, long time.   
  
He doesn’t really realize it’s a  _thing_  McCoy does until he receives a comm as he’s stumbling out of a specially-scheduled stellar cartography tutorial at midnight after three hours spent on the roof hand-drawing star charts.   
  
The message is from McCoy and it contains a fairly innocuous question—“can you come get me?”—as well as an address.   
  
The thing is that Jim totally knows that address. The smile that breaks over his face is like an apocalyptic sunrise.   
  
When the police officer pulls open the cell door, it’s to reveal McCoy sitting sullenly on the edge of the plain bench, his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.   
  
“Bones,” Jim says with immense satisfaction. “Bones, Bones, Bones. This is definitely role-reversal at its finest. What am I going to do with you?”  
  
“Bail me out or shut the fuck up,” snaps McCoy, not raising his head.   
  
“Vandalism,” says Jim, clucking his tongue. “Petty vandalism and resisting arrest.”  
  
McCoy fixes him with a bleary, red-rimmed glare. He’s surly and drunk and  _adorable_. “I was doin’ ‘em a favour. You should’ve seen this jackass. Parked in an accessible space without a permit, half in the goddamn street—”  
  
“I’m sure it was totally deserved,” says Jim soothingly. “Was it worth the demerits?”  
  
McCoy makes a face and gets to his feet. “Apparently I have to TA Anatomical and Forensic Pathology for three months. Ask me again after someone throws up on me during the first autopsy.”  
  
“Wait,” says Jim, making a box out of his fingers and holding it up, closing one eye and peering through it to frame McCoy’s deeply unimpressed expression. “Give me a minute to memorize every second of this moment. I’m going to want to be able to call it up in crystal-clear detail whenever I need a laugh.”  
  
“And I’m going to want to punch you in the mouth if you ever bring this up again,” grumbles McCoy.   
  
“I’ll just replay the image of you behind bars while you’re fixing my teeth and the pain will go away.”  
  
“I hate you so much right now.”  
  
“I know. I feel your scorn, and I accept it.”  
  
  
  
 **03\. for someone so grumpy he’s surprisingly generous with his time and resources**  
  
A week into their second year, Jim’s roommate washes out and, in a joint tacit decision which proceeds so easily that Jim thinks he should be a lot more alarmed than he actually is, McCoy moves in.  
  
Jim spends approximately two weeks terrified they’ve made a huge mistake and this is basically the beginning of the end—their friendship will not survive the stress of living together  _as well_  as being around each other during basically every available waking moment because  _what if Bones is the kind of person that writes his name on his stuff in the fridge_?  
  
He’s not, by the way.   
  
And aside from the epic bonus that nothing about their friendship changes for the worse and they manage the impossible task of growing  _even closer_ , McCoy is also an incredibly useful guy to have around in a  _lot_  more ways than one.   
  
Jim is so totally keeping him.  
  
“I am really, really bad at this,” says Jim, blinking in surprise as his PADD cheerfully informs him he’s just killed his patient. Again. “This is the third time my virtual guinea pig has totally bit it.”  
  
From his position at his desk across the room, McCoy makes a sympathetic noise carefully designed to denote detached interest without drawing himself into an unwanted conversation.   
  
He should really know by now that it doesn’t work on Jim.  
  
“Hey, Bones,” he says.  
  
McCoy stifles a sigh, resigns himself to the inevitable, and turns around to look at Jim wearily, though now that Jim has his attention, it’s his  _full_  attention. “What, Jim? I know you’re playin’ Operation, but unless you ask for help, I’m not getting involved.”  
  
“I’m positive it’s a collapsed lung,” Jim says, dialling it up a notch with a  _you-totally-love-me_  grin. McCoy scowls. “But it’s a field medicine simulation so I’ve got limited tools to choose from, right?”  
  
“Right,” drawls McCoy. He gets up, just like Jim knew he would, and comes to sit beside Jim so that he can see the PADD in his hands. Eventually, when he realizes he’s leaning over Jim’s shoulder like he’s the family dog and Jim is holding a sandwich just out of reach, he mutters something that sounds like a half-hearted apology and then snatches the PADD out of Jim’s hand. He taps through Jim’s previous attempts at the sim, eyebrows furrowed, before looking up and saying, “I can see where your problem is. It’s a simple mistake to make, but considering its one that can result in death, not a mistake you particularly want to make in a tough situation.”  
  
“Exactly,” says Jim. “Am I making the incision between the wrong ribs? Too high? ...No, too low?”  
  
McCoy nods slowly, eyes on Jim.  
  
Jim ponders this for a second. “You should take off your shirt,” he says unexpectedly, pulling his legs up onto the bed and putting the PADD aside. McCoy unconsciously mirrors his position, sitting cross-legged, though his answering expression is rolled eyes and a look that says  _you’ve got to be kidding me_.   
  
“Are you going to stab me?” he says smartly, making no move to undress.   
  
“Not with a scalpel,” says Jim with a leer.   
  
McCoy snorts. But then, miraculously, he takes off his shirt, arching his back and peeling it over his head. It leaves his hair mussed, and Jim’s fingers itch a little with the urge to tug. “How do you want me?” he asks carefully. Their eyes meet, tension suddenly thick between them. This is new. Very new, but not at all unwelcome. Jim swallows bracingly.   
  
“Just lie down. Stretch your right arm above your head,” he says. McCoy shuffles obediently into position which,  _wow_ , really shouldn’t be this hot.   
  
Hesitating for a moment, Jim then settles over McCoy’s waist, kneeling as close over his body as he can without resting his weight on him. McCoy’s eyes flick up to meet his, steady and knowing. “Your diagnosis looks fine,” McCoy says after a moment, when he realizes it’s up to him to break the self-conscious silence. “The symptoms definitely indicate pneumothorax, considering the scenario you were given. So where are you going to insert the chest-tube?”  
  
Jim reaches down and traces a line from McCoy’s armpit—which makes him twitch in response and stifle a small sound, Jim immediately filing away the information that he’s intriguingly ticklish for future reference—down his ribs, counting them absently as he goes.   
  
“Too far,” says McCoy. Jim slides his hand back up, palm splayed over McCoy’s warm skin. His fingers brush a nipple and McCoy shivers, tongue darting out to lick his lips. “Close. Move to the right.”  
  
Obligingly, Jim shifts his hand until his fingers are resting on two ribs to the right of McCoy’s nipple. He presses lightly, and McCoy’s breath hitches again at the touch. “Here?” he asks.   
  
“Yeah,” says McCoy, voice thick. “You were in the right general area, but too far over from the ideal location. You nicked an intercostal artery in the first two runs, and in the third you accidentally put too much pressure on the heart.”  
  
“Gotcha,” murmurs Jim. He meets McCoy’s eyes again, watching his reaction as Jim doesn’t pull back and instead keeps mapping out the topography of his torso, exploring the planes of his stomach and chest, tracing the curve of his ribs, dipping into his navel, shifting further up to flick his nipples again to watch him arch slightly and hiss a breath between his teeth.   
  
“Jim—” says McCoy hoarsely, squirming beneath the loose cage of his thighs. His hips roll up, buck against Jim’s ass, and Jim is immediately aware of how McCoy is half-hard.   
  
Well, that decides that.  
  
Jim settles his hands on either side of McCoy’s head and leans in close enough for their lips to brush, raining down a brief storm of soft, close-mouthed kisses before licking brazenly at McCoy’s lower lip and sucking it between his own. McCoy groans, bringing down the arm sprawled over his head to catch’s Jim’s hip, pushing up his shirt and thumbing over the sharp line of his pelvis, pressing bruises into his skin.   
  
“You’re the best study prop ever,” mutters Jim cheekily, cupping McCoy’s jaw and kissing the corner of his mouth. “Why didn’t you help me out with my homework sooner?”  
  
McCoy grunts softly, then thrusts his erection against Jim and squeezes his hip. “All you had to do was ask,” he reminds him. With a studied grace that startles Jim, McCoy lifts up one knee for leverage, cups Jim’s ass with both hands, and then turns them both over so that they land on their sides facing each other. “Get those damn pants off, Jim.”  
  
By the time Jim wriggles his pants down to his knees, McCoy has fished lubricant out from the bedside table. With a hand on the small of Jim’s back, he tugs their bodies closer, bumping their erections up alongside each other and drawing a thick moan from Jim. Jim is about to ask what the fuck he’s up to but then Bones, god,  _Jesus_ , Bones the fucking genius goes ahead and envelops both their dicks with his wide, slick palm and deft fingers. “Oh my God,” says Jim dumbly, bucking into McCoy’s tight grip and immediately digging his fingers into McCoy’s shoulders. “ _Bones_. You—”  
  
“Hush,” mumbles McCoy, biting his own lip, eyelids fluttering as he fists them both firmly and strokes a slippery path from root to tip that paints itself in a burst of starlight across Jim’s vision. “I’m concentrating.”  
  
“Ungh,” replies Jim, hitching a thigh over McCoy’s narrow hip and rutting into his hand. For a blissful eternity Jim just loses himself in the simple tactile pleasure of the rub and slide of skin on skin, the occasional slap of flesh when Bones twists his wrist and wrestles a whimper out of Jim by cork-screwing his thumb over the glans, the slow, cascading build of arousal tightening in his abdomen and in the heavy swell of his balls. He’s panting raggedly, crowning McCoy’s shoulders with a necklace of finger-shaped bruises, when McCoy’s free hand slips down between Jim’s legs.   
  
“What—” Jim doesn’t get another word out, because those inquisitive fingers brush his balls, back over his perineum, and then McCoy’s index finger rubs in a counter-clockwise circle over his hole and pushes in just to the first knuckle.   
  
Jim snaps his hips into McCoy’s fist, clamps his teeth over the tempting jut of his clavicle, and comes with a truly embarrassing whine.  
  
That’s not actually the hottest part.   
  
No, that honour goes to about a fraction of a second later, when McCoy’s instant reaction to Jim spurting hot and messy against his chest is to mewl helplessly, squeeze them both with spasming fingers, and then promptly unravel into his own spontaneous orgasm.  
  
When Jim regains the power of speech and abstract thought and the ability to, you know,  _see_ , he’s met with the heart-stopping sight of McCoy looking at him steadily from under his lashes, face relaxed, features soft, his hair spread sticky and damp over his forehead. Jim’s breath hitches in his lungs and he reaches out to brush his thumb over McCoy’s full lower lip.   
  
“And that,” says McCoy in a wrecked voice, his breath warm against Jim’s fingers, “Is how you treat a collapsed lung.”  
  
  
  
 **04\. he has a vaguely disturbing inclination towards creatively psychological means of revenge**  
  
Foraging for food one day when neither of them has had a chance to replenish the fridge with anything other than beer yields interesting results. Jim walks out of the kitchenette holding a plate that contains a slice of bread spread with mayonnaise, three dry carrot sticks, a spoonful of peanut butter, and a pickle.   
  
It’s not particularly appealing, which is okay because about two minutes later Bones comes stomping in and Jim’s eclectic sampling platter ends up all over the floor when Jim is too busy laughing to continue maintaining muscle control in his hands.  
  
“You need to understand that if you don’t stop laughing right now I will personally remove every single one of your pubic hairs with tweezers,” says McCoy through gritted teeth.   
  
“I wasn’t aware that Blue Man Group were still touring,” Jim manages to say between fresh waves of manly giggles.  
  
“What?” demands McCoy. “Never mind. Shut up. I hate you.”   
  
“Is that  _permanent_?”  
  
“It damn well better not be,” snaps McCoy. He stands hunched in the middle of the living area, depressed and kind of deranged-looking and very, very blue. Pretty much splattered from head to toe, although his boots and his pants below the knees have remained mostly untouched. “Or else my revenge will be swift and merciless. It’s on my damn  _tongue_.” He pushes his (blue) fingers through the thick wet (blue) mess of his (shockingly blue) hair, dripping little (blue) droplets all over the floor.   
  
“What is it?” asks Jim. His splitting grin is big enough to accommodate a small family-sized car. He can’t help it.  _Blue_.  
  
“Oh, I dunno, some sort of non-toxic organic compound Ma’thyne mixed up. Because she’s evil,” mutters Bones. He blinks, the white of his eyes startling in his bright-blue face. “The whole damn lot of them—like a pack of bratty kids, rigging up a damn bucket over the— _would you stop_?” he interrupts himself to bitch at Jim, who might just have resorted to helpless laughter again, his hands pressed over his mouth.   
  
“A bucket!” wheezes Jim. “A bucket full of dye! You live in a  _cartoon_!”  
  
McCoy crosses his arms over his chest, effortlessly turns his glare up to eleven, and then promptly shakes himself like a dog, showering Jim with specks of dye.   
  
Later, after McCoy has spent one hour and twenty-three minutes scrubbing his skin in the shower, he emerges in a cloud of steam and a tenuously-applied towel around the waist and fixes Jim with an expression of manic determination. “I need your help.”   
  
“To scrub your back?” teases Jim, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. McCoy’s skin is still very, very faintly blue, and his hair is hopeless—apparently whatever compound Ma’thyne whipped up could be marketed as excellent semi-permanent hair-dye. The thatch of bright electric-blue hair brushed over McCoy’s forehead makes him look like a sad wannabe punk.   
  
“No, asshole,” snaps McCoy, walking to his dresser and pulling out boxer-shorts and a t-shirt. He drops the towel, treating Jim to a surprise hello from McCoy’s spectacular, adorably dimpled ass, and shimmies into his underpants. “This is as normal as I’m gonna get for now. No, I require your assistance in devising a suitably righteous revenge to scare the pants off those fuckers. If I don’t get ‘em all back, working together is gonna be hell for the rest of the year.”  
  
Jim sits up like a meerkat, intrigued. “What did you have in mind?”  
  
McCoy, now sadly clad in nudity-dampening garments, shuffles over and flops down half on top of Jim. Real casual-like, Jim inches an arm around his shoulders like they’re teenagers at a movie theatre.   
  
And then, in truly intimidating detail, McCoy proceeds to outline a cheerful blueprint for retribution that makes Jim’s eyes widen a little. That whimper between his legs was probably his testicles retreating into the safety of his body.  
  
“—And so all  _you_  need to do is program whatever doohickey code I need to hack the instructor’s email,” finishes McCoy.   
  
Jim works his jaw. McCoy’s eyebrow inches expectantly up his forehead.  
  
“Well?” says McCoy gruffly when Jim doesn’t immediately reply.   
  
Jim hikes his balls back out and grins. “Piece of  _cake_ , Bones.”  
  
McCoy doesn’t implement his retaliatory prank for over two weeks.   
  
“I’m trying to lure them all into a false sense of security,” he says to Jim, with a content little grin. “Let them think equipment is gonna blow up in their faces or I’m gonna jump out from behind a doorway and spray ‘em all in the face with a hose. They won’t ever suspect this. It’s coming from the wrong angle.”  
  
They totally don’t.   
  
Jim makes sure he’s around for the big reveal. He did, after all, spend thirty whole minutes of his life hacking Dr. Linehan’s email for McCoy, and there’s the small matter of the sleek little code he wrote that would make sure that nobody but them could access the account for the next 24 hours. Which meant that all the messages tumbling into the inbox complaining about the shifted deadline of the second year Xenobiology term paper fed straight to Jim, and, by extension, McCoy, who wrote out vindictive little replies with a huge, shit-eating grin on his face.   
  
Chapel is the first to show up for her clinic shift. She looks exhausted and spares Jim a faintly curious glance.   
  
“Kirk. Injured already? It’s barely 0800.”  
  
“Sup, Chapel. Nah, just waiting for Bones.”  
  
“He’s probably still finishing his course-work,” she says through a yawn, heading straight for the coffee synthesizer and ordering it to produce something with far too many shorts of espresso. “I was up all night. Yesterday morning one of our instructors upped the deadline on our term paper from next Monday to today. Can you believe it? If I wanted to spend my night frying brain-cells I’d just sniff glue.”  
  
Jim tries not to let his grin spread. The rest of McCoy’s colleagues trickle in over the next ten minutes in various states of decay and despair, and McCoy makes sure he’s the last to turn up, sauntering in looking rested and  _disturbingly relaxed_. Jim watches in awe as everyone reacts to this relative unknown with healthy suspicion and a jump in the collective tension of the room.   
  
“Mornin’, y’all,” drawls McCoy pleasantly. He salutes everyone with his coffee mug.   
  
Jim watches Chapel’s jaw tic. Ma’thyne’s wide, mirrored eyes fix nervously on the skinny young man standing next to her—Riggins? Ronald?—and they exchange a glance of barely-concealed terror.  
  
“McCoy,” says Chapel warily. “You look...strangely well-rested.”  
  
McCoy  _smiles_  at her. Everyone in the room takes a step back from him except for Jim.  
  
The penny seems to drop.  
  
“You conniving son-of-a-bitch,” says Chapel after a moment of stunned silence. “How did you do it?”  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says McCoy, sipping calmly from his mug. “Lab day today. There are about forty-five boxes of blood samples that need cataloguing, and we’re runnin’ low on vaccines, so someone needs to program the replicator for rotating batches of what we’re lacking. And we just got a supply delivery.”  
  
“I call inventory,” says a stocky cadet called Becker, blinking brown eyes in eye sockets that look like he just went three rounds in the boxing ring.   
  
“More’n enough for everybody,” comments McCoy, as a noisy, hysteria-edged fight breaks out over who gets to do what.  
  
Chapel is still staring at him like she’s seeing him for the first time.   
  
McCoy catches Jim’s eye and  _winks_.  
  
In that moment, Jim has never loved him more.  
  
  
  
 **05\. he _totally_  gets off on sex in public places**  
  
Starfleet has the largest proper paper library in the entire state of California.   
  
It has five floors of stacks—long, quiet corridors that weave amongst the towers of textbooks and technical manuals and journals—with thick plush carpets and strategically placed armchairs. There are few computer terminals to be found, and most only allow network access enough to search the catalogue database.   
  
The entire place operates at least partially like a museum; the texts are all available in electronic format through easy download to the PADD of any cadet, instructor, or officer, so the books themselves are practically obsolete. Despite all that, Starfleet seems to recognize the value of keeping such a vast repository of information in hard copy, if only just to give cadets a place to go to read in peace, since the books can’t be removed from the building.   
  
Jim likes it most of all for the smell and feel of paper in his hands. Nothing really compares to the texture and heft of a real book. He likes it second of all because it’s almost always guaranteed to be absolutely deserted at 1900 hours on a Friday night.   
  
He finds McCoy sitting in one of the cheerful, over-stuffed chairs on the fourth floor, tucked away near the anatomy section in the back corner. He’s sitting cross-wise, legs hooked over the arm of the chair, with some sort medical text spread over his lap that, when Jim bends close enough to see the words, appears to be in Latin. The illustrations are hand-drawn.   
  
McCoy is dozing, fingers resting on the dry, crinkled pages of the book.   
  
Jim manages to ease it out of his lap without disturbing him, and leans in to press a kiss to McCoy’s forehead. He snuffles, eyelids flickering open. It takes him a moment to focus, and then the spot between his eyebrows crinkles, and he huffs.   
  
“Friday night,” says Jim with relish. “After a long, shit week, and where do I find you? In the library, alone, asleep in a squishy armchair. You are, like, the epitome of the words ‘party animal’.”  
  
“I like these chairs,” rumbles McCoy, his voice thick from sleep. He shifts, scrubs his hand over his face, and tries to straighten up and swing his legs off the arm, but Jim stops him with hands on his knees. “Jim—”  
  
Jim immediately covers McCoy’s mouth with his own. The angle is awkward, and his neck is starting to protest, but McCoy is warm and sleepy and he responds to Jim’s advances with slow, sweet precision, lips moving against Jim’s in a hot press of slick skin. McCoy’s fingers close around Jim’s wrist, a gesture that speaks to a desire to stop that operates in direct counterpoint to how McCoy is making little to no effort to actually halt the current proceedings. On the contrary, they neck for nearly five minutes, leisurely and relaxed, and then finally pull apart, McCoy’s fingers tightening briefly on Jim’s wrist. His eyes are glassy and dark, his lips kiss-swollen and flushed, and when he speaks, his voice is raw. “Jim, anyone could see.” There’s a little stammer to his voice, breathless and intent.   
  
“Right, because we’ve got such an audience in here,” mutters Jim. He slides his hands under McCoy’s knees, pulling them from the arm of the chair. McCoy slips, cursing, and catches himself before Jim tumbles him right out of his seat.  
  
“You never know,” protests McCoy. “I saw people go past earlier. The med track cadets really like this floor.”  
  
“Mm,” hums Jim. He curls his hands around McCoy’s thighs and squeezes. McCoy squirms, his cheeks flushing faintly. “Then come here, Bones.” Abruptly, he lets go of McCoy and turns, abandoning the open area at the end of a row of shelves where McCoy’s chair sits. He heads down between the towering stacks, listening to McCoy swear softly behind him and smiling when he hears him stumble to his feet and follow.   
  
For all McCoy’s grumbling, clothes are shed with remarkable alacrity, leaving them both half-dressed and kneeling on the thick carpeting, McCoy pressed up against a shelf housing over two hundred editions of  _Gray’s Anatomy_  from the past three hundred years or so.   
  
“Ow,” hisses McCoy, arching his spine away from the dig of a thick front cover. “Jesus, Jim, of all the—”  
  
“Shut it, Bones,” mutters Jim, splaying his hands wide on McCoy’s thighs and spreading his legs so that he can crouch between them. “Like you said—someone might hear us. Keep your voice down unless you  _want_  to be caught.”  
  
An intriguing shudder trembles through McCoy, and he grasps at Jim’s half-clothed hip, tugging him closer. Jim obliges, ducking in to cup McCoy’s face in one palm, kissing him tight and focused, coiled like a spring. McCoy is hot under his hand, fidgeting with uncontained restlessness, and when Jim reaches between them to tug curiously at his cock, McCoy is already painfully hard, jutting up thick and solid. He utters a little note of encouragement, plants his heels flat on the floor, and pushes up his hips.   
  
“Hang on—” Jim nudges forward with his body until he’s kneeling up on his heels, knees touching the bottom of the shelf. He’s got McCoy folded between his body and the stacks, legs drawn up, so he tucks one arm around the small of his back and uses the other to guide McCoy’s legs around his waist. “Here, just—rest your ass on my thighs for a minute,” grunts Jim, and McCoy shuffles down until he’s leaning back in Jim’s lap, legs locked around his waist, back pressed to the endless copies of books.   
  
“Ow,” says McCoy again. “This is exactly how I pictured spending my Friday, Jim,” he huffs. “I’m going to have horizontal and vertical lines dug into my back for days.”  
  
In response, Jim grips McCoy’s straining erection with a rough hand, drawing a stifled moan out of him. “Yeah,” pants Jim, “that’s what I thought.”  
  
“Bastard,” breathes McCoy. He makes the same half-startled, half-appreciative noise when Jim swipes the precome gathering on McCoy’s cock and uses it to circle the tight pucker of his hole, thumbing a circular pattern that makes McCoy twitch and grunt, muscles flexing. Jim teases in a fingertip, then withdraws his hand to lick and suck at his own fingers until he’s got enough lubrication to push past the tight pull of McCoy’s entrance, setting a quick, practiced pace as he repeatedly slides two fingers in and out of Bones, working him open. McCoy is panting shallowly, eyes rolling back whenever Jim deliberately swipes too close to his prostate. Before McCoy can get too comfortable with this arrangement, Jim twists his fingers, knuckling at the sensitive skin behind McCoy’s full, heavy balls, and McCoy yelps, body jerking against the shelves.   
  
“That’s it, Bones,” croons Jim, keeping his voice pitched low and filthy. “That’s it, you want to open up for me, don’t you. You want me to spread open that sweet hole of yours, you want my fingers and my cock filling you up deep. I bet you can’t wait for me to come in you, so that you can walk back to your room with a twinge in your ass and my come dripping down your legs.”  
  
McCoy breathes in sharply, makes a high, panicked little noise, his fingers tightening on Jim’s upper arms. “All—” Jim thumbs his prostate, and McCoy jumps. “ _Fuck_. A-all talk, Jim. You gonna sit there and finger me all night, or are you gonna fuck me already?”  
  
Jim doesn’t answer. He spits in his palm, gives his cock two rough strokes, and lines himself up, guiding the head of his cock to the cleft of McCoy’s ass. He nudges up against his hole, relishing McCoy’s anticipatory intake of breath, and then he thrusts in, driving McCoy up against the shelves.   
  
“Fuck!” exclaims McCoy, legs squeezing around Jim’s hips. Blinking, he pauses to adjust, and then he bears down, letting out a low, desperate groan as Jim slides in until he’s balls-deep, their bodies aligned and tucked together.   
  
Jim takes a few seconds to shift into a more comfortable angle, holding McCoy still on his cock and not letting him wriggle like he so dearly wants, before he braces his hands on the bottom shelf and starts to roll his hips, setting a deep, brutal rhythm that doesn’t let McCoy move at all; with the way their bodies are balanced, he has to lean back and take it, writhing and spitting curses and clutching Jim with white-knuckled hands.   
  
By the time Jim is aching to come, balls tight, tensed to breaking, McCoy has tipped his head back, his fingers digging crescent-moon indentations into Jim’s arms, every thrust shaking out a hoarse groan from his throat. Jim hasn’t bothered to do much more for him than grip his cock firmly, not stroking, just occasionally thumbing the head of his dick in a syncopated pattern designed to frustrate.   
  
Far down the corridor, somewhere on the either side of the library floor, Jim hears a pair of voices. Judging by the way McCoy whimpers, his cock twitching in Jim’s hand, he’s heard them, too.   
  
Jim bites his lip, leaning in so his lips just brush the shell of McCoy’s ear. “Does that make you hard, Bones? Is that it? That someone might find us?”  
  
McCoy makes a frustrated sound. His cock jumps again, rock-hard and flushed scarlet. “J-Jim,” he hisses, pressing his face to Jim’s throat. “Fuck, yes, I—please, I  _need_ —”  
  
Jim turns his head, pretending to listen into the distance. “Well, shit, I think they’re coming closer,” he murmurs, even though what he just heard was the lift, pinging closed as the voices recede. “I think they’re coming down this way, Bones, and you know what they’ll see? They’ll see  _you_ , pinned against the fucking stacks, sitting on my cock and getting fucked like a goddamn boss. You want that? They’ll see how well you take it, how you twist up for more, they’ll hear how you sound when you—”  
  
His thrusts aren’t even angling at McCoy’s prostate anymore, but Bones still arches up and howls, his entire body shuddering as he comes over Jim’s fist, completely overwhelmed.   
  
Well, damn.  
  
Isn’t that just  _fucking awesome_.  
  
  
  
 **+01. he keeps his promises**  
  
It shouldn’t take Jim so long to figure it out.   
  
Well, no, back it right up, he figures it out pretty early, actually, because it’s one of those things about McCoy that just— _is_ , like his perma-scowl and how the part in his hair is always in the same place and that he likes exactly two fingers of bourbon with no ice.   
  
The thing is, Jim doesn’t  _appreciate_  it for way longer than should be allowed, which sometimes makes him feel like a bit of a dick. He’s a lot less generous with himself; McCoy admittedly worms his way into Jim’s trust pretty quick, but it’s still harder for Jim than it seems to be for McCoy, who, for all his posturing, gives himself over to people with remarkable ease. He’s naturally empathetic and sensitive, and, at his core, tries his damndest to see the best in people.   
  
Of course, he does this by pretending the  _exact opposite_ , which isn’t the most cunning of disguises, but hey—Jim isn’t about to judge.   
  
But anyway, the thing is, Jim figures out pretty quick that when McCoy says he’ll do something, he does it. No question. He keeps his word to the very best of his ability, regardless of whether it’s agreeing to take out the trash or grudgingly showing up time after time to be Jim’s helmsman for the Kobayashi Maru.   
  
It’s a constant, for Jim. He doesn’t tell this to McCoy, because, Jesus, they are practically incapable of Talking About Feelings and the effort he’d need to expend to work himself up to having  _that_  conversation about  _this_  particular subject would age him prematurely about two decades, but he does try his best to  _show_  how important it is to him.   
  
McCoy trusts Jim implicitly even when the results of that (maybe slightly inadvisable) trust land them in a completely ridiculous situations—the campus-wide conga line was  _so_  not his fault—and, because Jim recognizes something special between them, he just—trusts McCoy in return.   
  
It really is that simple, in a way that it’s never been simple before.   
  
Some demonstrations are just small ones—even though Jim complains in theatrical detail about going to sickbay when he needs to or getting an allergy-booster, he still does it, because he trusts McCoy and he’s not a total idiot (dying in a stupid way would  _not_  be cool). Others are larger—despite the fact that Jim has developed a solid tradition of spending his birthday with nothing but the company of some truly excellent scotch, he adapts that tradition to include a quietly concerned Bones, because he trusts him.   
  
Jim learns, with somewhat painful slowness, what a balanced relationship between two people is supposed to feel like.   
  
He doesn’t  _truly_  appreciate McCoy’s long-standing and unspoken but very clear promise that he would sooner get air-locked before leaving Jim behind until it hits him hard, standing there in the controlled chaos of the shuttle bay, when McCoy’s hand wraps around his upper arm and his voice growls, “Come with me.”   
  
If there’s one thing that Jim knows about McCoy that truly defines his character, makes him mean that much more to Jim, it’s that fact that he always keeps his promises.  
  
There’s just a hell of a lot of grumbling and complaining along the way.  
  
Hey, that just makes it  _fun_.


End file.
